Evil

2003, 10:56 min, color, sound

Cokes continues his investigation of appropriated text and image, this time with a more explicitly topical approach. Evil addresses urban life and mediated representations of capital and capitalism, as well as the popular contemporary usage of the term "evil." The video is drawn from Cokes' installation Shrink, in which he asked several collaborators to shoot video of the Manhattan skyline from boats trolling New York's waterways. The resulting footage has the blandly impersonal, almost scientific precision of 19th-century panoramas. In this case, what is at once revealed and concealed is the face of American capitalism, global power, and high finance, slowly unscrolling for the viewer: Wall Street, the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, the United Nations. In Evil, Cokes overlays these images with quotations from philosopher Alain Badiou.

Music: The Notwist. Text : Alain Badiou interviewed by Christopher Cox and Molly Whalen. Camera: Jeff Reichert. Editor/Graphics: Scott Pagano. Installation Coordination: Sze Lin Pang. Concept/Form: Tony Cokes. Thanks: MCM, Brown University, Ursula Frohne and Christian Katti, Benj Gerdes, Andrea Gerth, Lars Hubrich, Kevin Murphy, Nick Woe, Vesela Sretenovic, Lisa Young. Special Thanks: Markus Acher, Florian Steinfeitner. Funded in part by a Salomon Research Award, Brown University.